Author Archive - PeopleInsight Workforce Analytics

John Pensom is CEO of PeopleInsight with 20 years’ experience in the "people" business and gained deep knowledge in how technology, information and analytics drives business and culture change. PeopleInsight is a Canadian company delivering cloud-based workforce and business analytics; it connects and unlocks traditionally disparate HR, talent, engagement, business results and external market data to deliver rich insight through analytics in clear, visually appealing and actionable ways. Read more

Last month we introduced 3 questions that should be asked of any reporting that is done with a regular cadence – monthly, quarterly, annually – where you can get into the habit of “same old, same old”.

Here are 3 questions to help you assess whether you have effective reporting and suggestions for making sure you’re hitting the mark. These are the questions that should be asked of any reporting that is done with a regular cadence.

PeopleInsight has pulled together their top five most popular blog posts this year (so far). From gaining a deeper understanding of the newest category in HR technology, to applying workforce analytics in the realm of Talent Acquisition for better recruiting, and hearing about one mid-sized companies own journey with DIY analytics, we’ve got a topic in the realm of workforce analytics for everyone.

Committing to your analytics journey can be overwhelming. As you get started with your objectives and priorities, you may realize you need help pulling together the data. Don’t worry, that’s a common situation. It’s important to find an analytics partner who will work with you to make the data connections that matter, and evolve as your business needs change.

People analytics can be very exciting at the same time as daunting and overwhelming. That’s why we stress the importance of starting small and keeping a precise focus on areas of priorities. With your objectives clearly defined, you will have a guide for the metrics, segmentation and analysis/insight phases of the framework.

In this week’s blog, we’re taking a look at the first and most critical step in kickstarting your analytics journey to bring value to your business—identifying and prioritizing your business objectives.

The gender pay gap has been much in the news lately as well as on the minds of the CEO and CHROs. It’s an issue that exists at the intersection of state/federal legislation, social values/ethics, and the economic realization that gender pay equity is good for business.

As we discussed in last month’s post, one key aspect to successfully using analytics to drive decision making is being able to tell the story—apply important context to the results to understand what they mean. Another key consideration is your audience. Your audience should determine what analytics to focus on and how you visualize the results.

In our last post, we explored the value of visualizations in bringing workforce data to life and simplifying understanding. So what comes next once we have robust people data, deeper understanding, and great visualizations? It’s time to start using HR Analytics to share insight and drive decision making with executives and lines of business. What’s the best way to do this? It’s through storytelling. That’s right…good old–fashioned storytelling.

With so much HR and Talent data at our disposal, its critical that we come up with ways to distill the volume into manageable and meaningful chunks of information. A key way to do this is via data visualization. It seems common sense, but why then do we still attend or present at meetings with slides consisting of rows and columns of numbers, or text–heavy slides with a crude chart or two as illustration of the points? Why do annual reports favour flat data, charts and lists, and heavy text explanations?

All of this got me thinking about the ways in which analytics can guide and drive the building out and scaling of a highly effective sales capability. With this in mind, I put together some thoughts on the inputs and decisions needed to gain a 360 degree view on your sales talent, broken into three components—Company Context, Candidate Profile & Recruitment, and Development, Support & Motivation.

Workforce data is everywhere. In all different formats using multiple languages, inconsistent terminology, and living in different systems. Given this complexity, it’s not surprising that most HR & talent teams access and utilize only a small portion of their data’s power. This is the data that’s visible, on the surface, and easily reported. But this is only the tip of the iceberg…and below the surface is where we really need to focus to deliver results for the business.